Dalia Blass, S&C’s Senior Investment Management Partner, spoke with Law360 about the challenges presented by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s treatment of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The SEC has repeatedly rejected issuers’ attempts to launch bitcoin ETFs, even as they have offered to engage in the surveillance-sharing agreements that the commission previously requested.
Dalia indicated that this contradiction shows that the SEC has yet to clarify the standard for bitcoin ETF approval or the legal analysis behind its stance. "If you step back, all of this speaks to the fact that it's really an unclear regulatory environment where players in the market do not know how to approach it," Dalia said. "They don't understand how these policy decisions are being made because they're being made in the shadows or regulation through enforcement."
Instead of regulation through enforcement, which leaves issuers guessing how they might launch bitcoin ETFs, Dalia urged the SEC to make clear rules for these products. "If [surveillance-sharing agreements] should be the standard for the space, then shouldn't the commission be doing a rulemaking, putting this out for notice-and-comment, so that the public understands what the parameters are, why that's the case, what exactly it's looking for, what's going to pass muster?" she said. "So that we're not guessing what would work and what would not work."
Read “BlackRock Filing Ignites New Hope For Bitcoin ETF Approval.”